Consequently, Amazon could buy Target, Macy’s, Dollar General, or Kroger for cash.
In fact, Jeff Bezos could buy both Dollar General and Macy’s or Kroger and Dollar General at once. Bezos can make such a purchase because Amazon (AMZN) has $41.25 billion in cash.

Sprouts’ dilemma is that Amazon is just one of its competitors. Besides Amazon sprouts has to compete with Kroger (NYSE: KR), Walmart (NYSE: WMT), Aldi, and Target (NYSE: TGT) to name just a few.

For example, Kroger has a close relationship with Instacart and it is America’s largest organic grocer. For example, Kroger sold $1 billion worth of organic produce in 2017, Progressive Grocer estimates. In addition, Kroger sold $2 billion worth of its Simple Truth organic grand in 2017, Progressive Grocer calculates.

Under those circumstances, I cannot see how Sprouts can compete and survive as an independent company. Instead, Sprouts’ future will be as part of a larger organization – such as Aldi Nord or Kroger.

Amazon no longer needs the 20,000 temps because of its deployment of Kiva robots in fulfillment centers, Citi analyst Mark May theorizes. In particular, Kiva robots eliminate workers who pull merchandise from the shelves.

Instead, the robots literally bring the shelves to the workers who pull and pack and the goods for shipment. Quartz claims, Amazon cut the time needed to pull and pack an order from an hour to 15 minutes with robots.

To be fair to Bernie, Amazon would have deployed the robots with or without the $15 wage. In fact, the robots could have made the $15 wage possible by reducing the size of the labor force. Amazon is paying workers more because it has fewer of them thanks to robots.

BestBuy (BBY) needs more partnerships because it is not making that much money.
For instance, BestBuy recorded an operating income of $335 million and a net income of $244 million for 3rd Quarter 2018. However BestBuy recorded a gross profit of $2.229 billion on revenues of $9.379 billion for the same period.
Beyond that BestBuy reported an operating cash flow of $904 million, an investing cash flow of $127 million, and a free cash flow of $710 million in 3rd Quarter 2018. Thus, BestBuy has a cash rich business.
On the other hand, BestBuy needs to keep more of that cash. The partnerships are important because they could give BestBuy more cash flow without costly expansion.

The goal of Smartly; however, is also to counter Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN). Target’s management hopes Smartly will lure in customers by offering prices lower than anything Amazon can provide.
Few retailers are in more danger from Amazon than Target. Amazon competes for Target’s core customer base; the urban and suburban middle class, in particular.
For example, Target’s target customer is a 35-year-old suburban soccer mom. Unfortunately, that soccer mom is the person most likely to belong to Amazon Prime.
An obvious use of Smartly is to get people under 30 (Millennials) used to shopping at Target. Target hopes to turn those Millennials into loyal customers by the time they have kids.